Denis MacShane / Jun 2025
Photo: Oscar Gonzales Fuentes/Shutterstock
The iron law of politics is that no good deed goes unpunished. Spain under its socialist government is now West Europe’s poster boy in terms of growth. Its fellow catholic nation Poland is the growth champion of the eastern EU.
Spain posted 3.2 per cent growth last year which Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves can only dream of. There have been useful labour market reforms inherited from the previous centre-right government who gave way to Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party in 2019.
Sanchez hasn’t tried to reverse those policies. In his first government 2019-2023 he was in coalition with Podemos, one of the many new EU parties of the left that grew in response to the 2008-9 crash of finance capitalism – think Syriza in Greece, Mélenchon in France, Die Linke in Germany, 5 Stars in Italy, or Corbynism in England.
The left commentariat in London and Paris swooned over the new parties but all they did was split the combined left vote and opened space for the more effective populists of the nationalist far right.
Podemos was formed by academics not workers or the practitioners of the democratic left seasoned in electoral politics. It was financed by the Venezuelan autocrat Nicolas Maduro and at the subsequent election in 2023 collapsed to just 4 seats.
The biggest party in the Cortes – Spain’s 350 strong parliament – is the centre-right Christian Democratic Partido Popular with 136 seats. But Pedro Sanchez remains prime minister with his Socialist Party’s 120 seats as he can count on a further 28 votes from Basque and Catalan nationalists (themselves split between left and right leaning historic parties) and the rump of Podemos votes. A fake left party Sumar was set up in 2023 which won 8 seats but it imploded during the subsequent Europen Parliament elections.
Meanwhile the PP faces Spain’s variant on the 1930s nostalgic ethnonationalist, Muslim-hating, anti-immigration Europe-wide populist right in the shape of VOX, the Franco nostalgic party now linked to Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, Victor Orban and Nigel Farage.
VOX has 33 seats but the Partido Popular, rather like English Tories and Reform, won’t make any arrangement let alone alliance with VOX. The VOX nationalists above all hate the Catalan and Basque separatists. If a Barcelona deputy stands up in the Cortes and says a few words in Catalan, the VOX deputies start screaming and the PP deputies walk out.
So the chances of a wider right coalition even if it has more Cortes seats replacing the Socialists is zero.
Spain’s economic success is due to one simple cause. More people in the country. 90 million tourists visited last year. The government is trying to stop or control 100s of thousands of AirBNB lettings but with Spanish unemployment at 12 per cent telling the low-income Spaniard who has a flat or small house to let is a hard call.
But the main driver of growth is immigration. This century Spain’s population surged from 40 million to 48.4 million. Half of the immigrants come from Latin America, speaking Spanish, sharing Spain’s Catholic faith but ready to work in agriculture, construction, caring, staffing hotels, bars, holiday facilities, restaurants and cafés as well as caring, housework and other jobs the modern Spaniard thinks is below his or her status.
Unlike Europhobe Britain, under both Tory now Labour ministers Spain does not object to fellow Europeans coming to help grow the economy. 30 per cent of immigrants in Spain are fellow Europeans. 1.8 per cent of immigrants come from North Africa, mainly Morocco which has historic links to Spain.
But this sensible pragmatic approach to immigration so different to the quasi racist hostility that infects northern European or British politics and now under Trump, the United States, is being undermined by Spain’s fatal political attraction – corruption.
Sanchez has just seen one of his closest allies as No 3 in the Socialist Party named along with other Socialist officials by investigators for taking bribes in exchange for awarding public contracts.
Sanchez went to the Socialist Party HQ in calle Ferraz, a narrow street in the centre of Madrid and stated “there is no such thing as zero corruption.” It was hardly a convincing line. He insisted he would stay in office until the next elections in 2027. Senior Socialists are questioning this defiance but the Partido Popular, leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, while calling for Sanchez to resign is not seeking a parliamentary vote as he knows he would not have a majority.
Spain’s parliament is like the French National Assembly where there are always enough votes to block any significant legislation. Sanchez like Macron can head the government but he has no majority to force through reforms as the different coalitions of hostile deputies refuse to follow the government’s lead.
Sanchez’s wife faces allegations over her private work. In Britain, it is usually the media that launches allegations of improper behaviour by politician or their family members. In Spain, the appointment of investigating judges is a political process so judges can launch judicial inquiries into politicians and their families.
Sanchez took five days to decide on his future, when a court decided to open preliminary proceedings against his wife over allegations surrounding her business dealings. Then he decised to stay in power. So Pedro Sanchez will probably limp on as prime minister and there is no certainty that the next Cortes election in 2027 will deliver a clear majority for any party.
So while Spain’s economy booms, Spain’s politics are going from bad to worse.
Denis MacShane is the UK’s former Minister of Europe and chaired the annual Tertulias meeting between Spanish and British ministers and parliamentarians.
